


just can't place

by animad



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 21:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17231957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animad/pseuds/animad
Summary: dan goes home for christmas during his first year at uni and has some thoughts about home and family





	just can't place

**Author's Note:**

> This is some 2am introspection from my first day home from uni for christmas where I had some Thoughts and Feelings. I'm still not entirely sure if I came to sort any sort of conclusion or if I even really had a point but it felt easier to process writing it from someone elses perspective.
> 
> also sorry for the amount of run on sentences lmao
> 
> unbetaed

Dan pushes open the door to his bedroom, pulling his suitcase in behind him. He haphazardly dumps it against the wall in favour of flopping himself backwards onto his bed and lets out a long slow breath.

He looks up at the ceiling. The same ceiling he's been looking up at for the past 18 years of his life. The off-white colour that runs throughout the house, dulled grey with age, familiar patterns of the brush strokes that he’s spent hours making images out of during the last few minutes before sleep. He turns his head to the side and looks at the golden wall he'd begged his parents for a few years back and had then decided he’d hated as soon as it was finished but was too stubborn to agree that they were right and ask them change it.

The wooden wardrobe standing where it has always stood in the corner of his room and matching set of drawers with the old box tv on top. He’d complained mercilessly about how all his friends had cool flat screens in their rooms but had soon let up after his parents threatened to take it away since he hated it so much. Crappy tv was better than no tv if it meant spending less time in the presence of his family.

Everything is exactly where he'd left it, every piece of furniture, every poster, even the missing sock that had been left draped over the radiator below his window while its pair had made its way into his suitcase and up to manchester thanks to hasty packing on move in day.

He shouldn't be so surprised, he's only been gone three months. Though he's heard of students going home for Christmas only to find their room completely up-ended already and turned into an office or taken over by an overeager younger sibling. Or even the dreaded spare bedroom. His own parents had made jokes about turning his into an exercise room once he'd left. He wonders how long he's got, how many trips home he has home before that becomes his reality too. It crosses his mind that maybe they _had_ been just jokes. Humour as a coping mechanism is a common trait in his family and his mum had gripped his shoulders pretty hard when he'd walked through the front door a few minutes ago. Even his brother had given him an brief, awkward half sort-of-hug before quickly scuttling off to whatever corner of the house he’d appeared from.

It makes him feel guilty for the dread he’d been feeling and the putting off of buying train tickets he'd been doing all week.

All his flatmates talk to their families way more than he does, some even come up to visit on the weekends. They'd all been excited about the prospect of going home for the holidays, Dan had felt like he had to play up his enthusiasm whenever they'd asked him about his plans.

He hears a jingling in the hallway outside his bedroom and a second later his door is creaking open and a wet nose is peering around the corner. Dan smiles instantly as his family dog traipses into his room.

“Hey, girl,” he says, reaching out a hand to her. She stops just by the bed and looks up at him expectantly.

He pats the space beside him and she instantly jumps up into it, stretching herself out on her stomach, chin resting on her front paws by his head. He rolls onto his side so he’s facing her and runs his hand along her back, curling his fingers into her long fur.

“Did you miss me?” he whispers, and tickles behind her ears. Her long tail lifts and thuds back down onto the duvet just once.

Dan's heart swells suddenly, and he leans forward to kiss her firmly on the forehead.

“I missed you too.” He says back to her.

He wraps an arm around her middle and pulls her closer so he can feel her body pressed against his chest and closes his eyes.

She lets them stay like that for a few more minutes, until a noise from downstairs is deemed interesting enough for her to crawl out of Dan's embrace and jump off the bed to go and investigate. Dan sighs and sits up too, crossing his legs in front of him and pulls out his phone.

2 text messages from Phil.

 _Hey ^_^  
_ _Make it home alive?_

 _yeah just about  
_ _was cuddling the dog :3_

 _jealous  
_ _of you and the dog xD_

Dan's grinning to himself like an idiot. He wonders if this giddiness will ever fade. He hopes it doesn’t. Being able to actually see Phil in person whenever he likes is pretty much the only thing that’s made the last three months worth it.

He drops his phone in front him, grateful for the only two things in his life that he can count on to distract him from his spiralling.

His mum shouts up that dinners ready. He waits in his room as long as he can before deciding he’s drawn it out long enough and should probably go show his face, and besides he is kind of hungry.

He takes the journey down to the kitchen as slow as he can without sounding suspicious. Which is probably a bad idea because that means he has time to notice the things around him on the way there, which only serves to bring back that melancholy feeling.

It's strange because this is his house. His home. The place in which he grew up. So why does he feel like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't quite fit anymore? He sees things around him that belong to him. Things that haven't moved since he himself put then there months ago, like the pile of board games on the corner step at the top of the stairs, which he knows have gone untouched. Things that make up his whole idea of the word ‘childhood’, like that plastic toy he got in a McDonald's meal when he was 8 years old that for some god forsaken reason they'd kept and still decide to keep, or the floral old person pattern of the upholstery on his grandma's arm chair that still resides in their living room.

Every single one of then is Home. But also a distance memory. A memory he hasn't thought about in months because he just hasn't had reason to.

Coming back and seeing all of again is like listening to a song you haven't heard in years, but at one point in your life all you did was listen to that song. You played it on repeated every waking minute of every day for days, weeks, months at a time. And for that time it was yours. It belonged to you and no one else. And then you just stopped. You moved on and found something else to listen to and never went back.

But then you find it again, years later, and listen. And it sounds exactly the same, every word, every note, every second is so familiar to you. Just like every inch of Dan's house is familiar to him because he's spent years with it on repeat, committed every detail to memory.

Except it's not. There's something different about it that you just can't place, and you realise it's no longer yours. It belongs to you of the passed.

Once the song is over you let the music move on. It doesn't quite sound the same, and you don't want to think about that too hard because the memory of passed you who had danced and cried and felt so much to this song is too precious. And you don't want to ruin that.

But that song also belongs to someone else right now.

While Dan had left, his family hadn't. Their lives have carried on without him in this house. They still fit perfectly into the jigsaw puzzle.

This is still the place they came home to at the end of everyday. The things that now, for Dan, hover that line between his past and his present are still very much squarely in their present.

And that makes Dan feel odd. He’s sure he's had every emotion possible at some point in this house, yet he can’t really put his finger on what this one is.

He feels anger for half a second, at what he wasn't sure. Because they are ruining the memories of his life here? Or because they were continuing theirs, making new ones that he is no longer a part of?

Or maybe it’s sadness, because they have to continue living here while he gets to go out and explore the world, have the opportunity of starting over?

But he’ll fall back into the same routine he’s always had in this house, the good and the bad, and he’ll think about what’s it’s like for them to carry on without him. What happens to his empty space while he’s gone, do they fill it up? Do the rest of his family get a little more room at the dining table? Maybe it’s just left empty, ready for whenever he wants comes back.

He takes a seat at the empty space at table and dishes himself up some food.

“Finally dained to join us have you?” His dad quips.

Dan tenses slightly and refrains from the instinctively sarcastic come back he usually gives whenever one of his parents try to start a conversation with him. They deserved better from him, he knows that. He does.

He things maybe there’s some gratefulness there too. Grateful that they _are_ still continuing their lives here, like nothing has changed at all, because that means he always has a home to come back to. No matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> [reblog on tumblr](https://yourfriendlyblogstalker.tumblr.com/tagged/my-fic)


End file.
